


Dark Visions

by Avaesta



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Coping Mechanisms, Dogs, Found Family, Gen, Mentions of past family abuse, Non lethal ending, Panic Attacks, Post-DotO, The Outsider still has Void stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 04:18:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12424863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avaesta/pseuds/Avaesta
Summary: In the stillness of the night, when his heart grew quiet, he got glimpses of loss and violence.He didn't want to be alone.





	Dark Visions

In the stillness of the night, when his heart grew quiet, he got glimpses.

 

It was the middle of the day, a bright sky that might as well have been the lightning strikes of the night. The heat made his vision sway as if on a boat at sea, cold drops clinging to his back. It was not something he was used to, but neither was it a voyage to the unknown.  ~~There was almost nothing unknown to him. He relished the surprise of being proved wrong.~~

 

His connection to the Void never really faded. The tides and waves of the darkness were always at the corner of his mind, waiting. Seeing it from within and without were different realities altogether, as if hearing one's voice through an audiograph. Was it mourning its lost god? Were all the turns and tumbles, the dizziness and the emptiness, the price to pay for his life, a curse that transcended his death?

 

He closed his eyes. 

 

The room smelled of brine and slaughter, lingering with the last meal. There were no spices on the abandoned apartment, and no time yet to buy - or steal - some. The ceiling fan turned again and again, creaking and frowning as if ready to fall down. Some guards were chatting on the streets below. If he concentrated enough, he would hear the seagulls and the crashing of the waves over the bay. After some time, standing in silence, he would hear his heartbeat, feel his breathing. It was a small ritual he took to perform, when his eyes grew tired but the day was alive: feel the world without seeing it. After watching for so long, he got some comfort in perceiving without images.

 

In the darkness, he found, sounds and smells and touches were distorsioned and contracted, took many forms and twisted into empty things. He knew of all the horrible things hidden in plain sight, all the gruesome meanings of the change of a pitch, and the sick undertones of death in the skin of a beggar. Poisoned meat for one guard, a limp that hid abuse, the changed voice of an almost strangled man. There is always more than meets the eye, always something hidden in the hearts of men. Shame, guilt, pain, malice, evil; the abused and the abusers were two sides of the same coin.

 

He knew all of this, of course. He had already seen all of this. But seeing, knowing, and experiencing, were very different concepts. Over five months had passed since his arrival at the city and yet - it felt like the blink of an eye. What's a month to millennia? What's an apartment to infinity?  No, he already knew what kind of world this was. He knew what people were, what they wanted to be, what they ended up becoming. He wasn't afraid of people. Isolation, he thought, was his greatest fear. Loneliness.

 

He saw Billie die, a couple of times. When it first happened, he wouldn't speak for days: surviving members of the cult beheaded her, trapping him again. ~~He didn't want to think of the implications of that.~~  The second time, just arriving Karnaca, a contact sold her out. The third, she died defending him. Burned alive. Hunted down. Fell to her death. Even once, by her own hand. Endless and frightening visions of death. He stopped sleeping after a while, just to avoid seeing his companion die again and again and again. 

 

The first time he fell, fatigued, he'd been cooking. Almost burned half his hair off, if not for Billie catching him. Later, he dropped mid-conversation in the table, waking hours later in his bed. He got a nasty cut from the time he fell off the stairs while waiting for Billie to come down. No word was said between them; she knew, and he knew she knew. The trances, the sleep muttering, the lost stares: getting out of the Void had not been easy, and she would not pretend it was, or know what he was going through, nor offer empty comfort. The understanding in her face was more than enough. 

 

In trial and error, they established a schedule benefiting them both: she would do all her contracts between midnight and sunrise, when he was awake, to get home early in the morning and sleep through it together. It worked for a while; he couldn't precisely control falling asleep when ~~Billie's not dead, she's right beside you, those are her snores, she's shuffling now~~  everything seemed ok. But Billie was a busy person, and couldn't stay there all the time for him.

 

One day, Billie arrived with a bundle in her hands. It was a white wolfhound, a frail looking thing, clearly discarded by its zealous masters. "Better here than dead", she said. He had the feeling she wasn't just taking about the dog. The pup was playful, but quiet, with a bark so soft it sounded like whispers at dusk. A fierce bite deterred any thoughts on his gentleness, with a protectiveness to match.

 

After seeing his father in a dream, a bitter fight to death with the dog, he would sleep with it, whispering ~~he's not here, it's not real, this is not a vision, this is a memory, the past is not my future~~  soft lullabies until he dropped. More than once Billie found them curled under the stairs, fur stained with tears, looking the other way. Sometimes she gave him space. Others, she joined him.

 

Despite formally meeting so little time ago and her intolerance for the occult, they instantly clicked, and could read each other like a book. He and Billie shared an odd bond, something they never talked about, but always there: he wouldn't ask of her past  ~~even if he already knew it~~  and she wouldn't ask of the Void. She would accept his fevers and fumes, and he would accept her screams and nightmares. In the end, it didn't matter who supported who. They were both terribly broken.

 

They tried to mend each other as best as they could.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have the headcannon the Outsider still has some connection to the Void, and it shows him the possible past, present and future of those around him. Since he doesn't have the physical means to process the visions, it would take some toll until he got used to it.


End file.
